Rise of the Rocket Girls

by Nathalia Holt

  By January 1962, JPL was ready to launch another lunar probe. Ranger 3 blasted off from Cape Canaveral, bound for the moon. At least that was the plan. Almost immediately, things began to go wrong. Only two minutes after takeoff, the staging of the Atlas missile went haywire and the engine cutoff did not occur on schedule. Instead, the rocket accelerated off course. Then the guidance system of the Agena rocket malfunctioned, sending Ranger even farther off its trajectory. It was clear they weren’t going to land on the moon, but the engineers at JPL thought at least they could use the spacecraft’s instrumentation to explore deep space. Unfortunately, when they sent the command to turn the system on, the onboard computer died. It was a complete disaster.

  As those at JPL tormented themselves about the failed Ranger, Sue Finley had just received some happy news. She’d been trying to get pregnant and, ironically, had been taking birth control for three months under the guidance of her doctor, who believed the pill would help regulate her cycles.

  The pill was brand-new in 1960, and Sue was among the first in her generation to benefit from it. For the first time, women had the medical means to control when they became pregnant. The arrival of the tiny tablet of hormones marked the beginning of two decades of revolution in gender equality and the rise of feminism worldwide.

  For Sue, the pill was a godsend, but for a different reason than for most. Coming off the pill, she got pregnant right away. She was filled with emotion, elated at the prospect of becoming a mother but terrified of losing another baby. At the same time, she had fallen in love with her work. Now the idea of leaving JPL saddened her. I’ll just take a leave of absence, she thought. She wasn’t ready to let the lab go.

  As Sue was contemplating leaving, changes were afoot. The women were learning FORTRAN, a new computer-programming language. The name FORTRAN, they would learn, came from “Formula Translation,” since the program was ideal for translating mathematic equations into code. Barbara and Helen found the language exceptionally easy to learn, especially with the Caltech classes that JPL sent them to.

  FORTRAN was a string of simple commands and could program nearly any computer. The women wrote out their program on paper in much the same way they set up their equations by hand. The difference was that they used only the specific commands the computer could recognize. They then took their notebooks to the keypunch.

  The keypunch looked like a typewriter but with special buttons that allowed holes to be made in punched cards. The cards were rectangles, about 7½ inches long and 3¼ inches wide, made of thick, stiff paper with long rows of repeating numbers, 0 to 9, running down their length in eighty tightly packed columns. To run a complex set of calculations, whole decks of cards were needed. Like the pages of the women’s notebooks, each card contained lines of mathematical functions.

  Punch cards used by the women to write programs

  Most of the computers had never used a typewriter—only secretaries at JPL used those—and didn’t even know how to type. But they quickly learned how to work the keypunch. Just as each number on the keypad of a phone can be used to type in letters, the keypunch used a code to translate each letter of FORTRAN into a number. When Helen pressed A on the keypunch, the machine loudly leaped into action, feeding the card into the machine and punching a hole in the 7 on the card. Line by line as Helen typed her commands into the keypunch, the letters transformed into a punched pattern. If she made a single mistake on the keypunch there was no salvaging it; the card had to be thrown away, and she had to start over with a fresh card.

  When Helen had accurately entered the full set of commands from her notebook, she wasn’t quite done yet. She still had to compile her code. Just as is done today, Helen’s source code—written in her programming language, FORTRAN—had to be compiled so that the computer could recognize it in its own language, the binary code of zeroes and ones. Each line of assembly code translated into one instruction in binary machine code. While Helen could translate the punches in the cards into the equations they stood for, the IBMs could not. She had to run all the cards through a special machine called a compiler.

  Navy rear admiral Grace Brewster Murray Hopper and her team at Remington Rand, in New York City, produced the first compiler in 1952. That machine, the A-0, and later the A-2, translated mathematics into computer code. Hopper knew that for digital computers to become mainstream, people couldn’t be expected to write in binary code. Instead she had to find a way to communicate between humans and computers. The compiler was the answer: a translator between man and machine. It was the beginning of computer languages.

  The compiler technology was brand-new and had to be specific to each computer language. “Nobody knew anything. They [compilers] didn’t exist! Everything we did we invented on the fly,” said Lois Haibt, a programmer at IBM who built the core of the FORTRAN compiler in the late 1950s.

  Helen ran her cards through the FORTRAN compiler, which then produced a second set of cards containing the running program in a language the IBM could understand. The first set of cards was for her; she and the other women could pass them back and forth and see how the code had been written. The second set of cards was only for the IBM. This deck was then loaded into the computer, which would run the operations and give Helen the output she needed. When it was all done, Helen put the cards away in cardboard boxes. You never knew when you might need to run the program again.

  The engineers viewed the IBMs with suspicion, while the women embraced the new technology, largely because of their hands-on experience in using the machines. The world of programming kept drawing them in, expanding in both complexity and scope.

  In 1960, a new girl had started in the computer room. She didn’t have the best work ethic. She was prone to unexpected flare-ups and overheating. The new girl was an IBM 1620 who took up her own desk in a nook adjoining the computer room. It didn’t seem right that the new computer didn’t have a name. A sign on the outside of her door read CORE STORAGE, so they christened her Cora and spoke of her as one of the group. Cora needed the air to be chilly, so inside her room it was freezing cold. Even when it was 100 degrees outside, the women got in the habit of bringing sweaters to the lab in deference to their wired companion.

  Within IBM, the 1620 had another nickname: the CADET, or Computer with Advanced Economic Technology. The programmers there jokingly referred to the machine’s limits by saying the acronym stood for “Can’t Add, Doesn’t Even Try.”

  Despite its drawbacks, Barbara smiled as she read the nameplate that hung outside the computer room, listing each member of the Mission Design department. HELEN LING, SUPERVISOR graced the top, while the rest of their names, including her own, followed. Beneath them she added a nameplate that read CORA. The IBM computer was officially part of the family.

  Cora was getting a lot of use as the team worked on Mariner. The competition to reach Venus was intensifying. When the women needed motivation, they wandered over to an engineer’s desk where a picture of the Soviet Venera 1 hung. The USSR’s first mission to Venus, in early 1961, had failed, but the picture was a reminder that if they wanted to be first, they needed to hurry.

  The computers charted a course for the spacecraft. It would fly by Venus, carrying scientific equipment capable of detecting the neighboring planet’s atmosphere. They constructed the spacecraft in pairs so that even if one mission failed, they would have a backup. Second chances were important, since Mariner would be the first spacecraft to fly by another planet. The excitement among the computers was building. They watched as the ship was constructed, impressed with the solar panels that reminded them of butterfly wings. They said good-bye to their baby as the spacecraft was packed up and sent off to Florida.

  On July 22, 1962, Mariner launched. Immediately, the mission went awry. First the Atlas antenna malfunctioned, and for the first minute mission control couldn’t detect its signal. Without a detectable signal, a smoothing function from the internal guidance system was supposed to kick in, keeping the spacecraft headed in the
right direction. Instead, the launch vehicle wildly overcorrected, forcing the rocket off course.

  The internal guidance system didn’t work properly because of a simple transcription error. When the handwritten guidance program was transcribed in Florida, a superscript bar was mistakenly left off the program. That one mistake meant that the program wasn’t able to correct the rocket’s course. Both the hardware failure of the Atlas antenna and the software bug in its guidance system meant that Mariner was completely out of control. No one could predict where it would wind up; it could slam into the Atlantic Ocean or it could veer off and crash into a town. With only seconds remaining before the stages separated and Mariner could no longer be destroyed, the range safety officer made the difficult decision to order the destruct signal. Built into every launch was a self-destruct button. In case the rocket headed for a residential area instead of space, explosive charges were placed on the vehicle. The range safety officer, a member of the air force, was put in the unenviable position of having to decide when the rocket had deviated so far off course it had to be destroyed. When the decision was made, the spacecraft that they had invested so many hours in was blown up, only minutes after it was launched.

  The women in Mission Design were upset, but they didn’t have time to waste on self-pity. If they wanted to get to Venus they had only weeks to get there. The Mariner program had been designed to take advantage of Venus’s relatively close position to Earth during the summer of 1962. Unlike in the typical picture of the solar system, which shows the planets moving around the sun in perfect, uniform circles, the orbits are actually far more complex. The planets move in unique ellipses, their speed and direction varying as they make their way around the sun. Because of this, the computers knew, they couldn’t simply point a rocket at Venus and fire it. Instead they had to determine how the spacecraft would bend around the orbits of both the sun and Venus and plot a precise trajectory. Earth, Venus, and the sun had to be flawlessly lined up, but an alignment so perfect happened only once every nineteen months. If they wanted to catch Venus, they had to send Mariner 2 up right away.

  The women worked late nights and weekends on Mariner, desperately checking their trajectories and programs. The hours were exhausting, especially for new mothers Barbara and Helen, but their paychecks were worth it. As hourly employees they were both earning impressive incomes, outstripping their husbands, thanks to the long hours Mariner required.

  At Cape Canaveral the air force had little time to assign blame for the Mariner 1 accident. The man who had left the bar out of the program, and who had since been promoted, apologized. They moved on. The Atlas antenna was fixed and the guidance system reprogrammed. On August 27, 1962, Barbara sat in the control room and felt the strange, frenetic energy that filled the room before a launch. The late launch nights were hard on her little family, yet so worthwhile. She knew she wouldn’t be able to do any of it without Harry. While she worked late, he rushed around, picking up Karen from day care, then feeding and bathing her, and putting her to bed with a kiss.

  Barbara thought of the family moments she was missing but quickly had to focus and prepare for what they all hoped would be a history-making launch. At 11:53 p.m. in California, she watched the Teletype data roll in. Sitting with paper and mechanical pencils, she began to calculate the position of the rocket. Suddenly, an electrical short occurred in the Atlas rocket and the whole launch vehicle began to roll, spinning once a second as it flew through the sky. Luckily the range safety officer wasn’t worried enough to destroy it, and the group watched as the Atlas flew, completely unresponsive to the guidance system. Then, as mysteriously as it started, the short fixed itself. From then on everything went smoothly, and they were amazed at their luck. However, it would be months before they would learn whether the spacecraft would make its groundbreaking flight past Venus. Barbara thought of their Mariner 2, out exploring the universe alone, while Harry picked her up. It was the middle of the night and Barbara, exhausted, was feeling lucky to have a ride. She worked late so frequently that Harry had ingeniously constructed a baby cot carefully nestled in the backseat of their Peugeot so he could bring Karen along when he ferried Barbara home. The French car often drew snickers from the neighbors, who whispered that it was a sure sign the new father was a beatnik. Harry laughed off such comments; he loved the little car, unusual as it might be. Barbara did too, and as she got in that August night, she caressed her sweet daughter, snuggled in blankets.

  While the Mariner program seemed to have turned things around, the lunar missions were floundering. The Ranger program had already suffered four failures and now, only a few months after the Mariner 2 launch, they were about to fail again. There were grumblings from NASA that perhaps an academic lab wasn’t the best place to organize missions and that the work should be transferred to a private contractor.

  At JPL they knew that not only were their jobs on the line, but the entire manned space program was depending on them. While JPL tried to keep up, the Mercury Seven were finishing their training. The astronauts were completing multiple missions orbiting Earth, all of them successful. At the same time their launch vehicle was coming along nicely. The Saturn rocket, developed by von Braun’s team at the newly minted Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, was speedily going through development and testing. Based on the Jupiter-C, developed by JPL and von Braun, Saturn would be far more powerful. It had to be if it was going to carry humans into space. It seemed everything was progressing as it should, with one glaring exception: the Ranger program. If they couldn’t land a spacecraft on the moon, how could they send men there?

  The pressure was mounting on September 12, 1962, when President Kennedy spoke at Rice University. “We choose to go to the moon,” he said to the crowd. Yet it seemed JPL was choosing Venus instead. With the lab’s attention divided, it was questionable whether either mission would succeed. Still, Barbara was happy to hear the president pledge to put the space program into high gear. Her cheeks flushed with pride when he mentioned their work at JPL: “The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the forty-yard lines.”

  With support for the space program soaring, it was hard to watch Ranger 5 fail only a month later. For some unknown reason the power malfunctioned on the spacecraft and the batteries ran down. It missed the moon by 450 miles and instead started circling the sun. However, the timing was fortunate, since Americans were suddenly too worried about nuclear war to care about missions to the moon.

  For thirteen days in October 1962 the world seemed on the brink of disaster. When an American spy plane spotted nuclear-missile-site construction by the Soviets in Cuba, President Kennedy placed a blockade of American ships around the island. Cuba was cut off from the world. Addressing the nation on October 22, Kennedy said, “My fellow citizens: let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out. No one can foresee precisely what course it will take or what costs or casualties will be incurred.” It seemed the world was accelerating toward nuclear war.

  The roots of the Cuban missile crisis were tangled up in American rocketry. In 1961, Americans had deployed Jupiter nuclear missiles to Turkey, adjacent to the Soviet Union. And these medium-range ballistic missiles were developed by none other than Wernher von Braun at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency.

  At last, Kennedy brokered a deal with the Soviets. They would dismantle their weaponry in Cuba in exchange for a pledge from the United States not to invade the island. In addition, the United States would dismantle its missiles in Turkey. The tensions between the two countries were lessened, at least for the moment.

  Although nuclear missiles had temporarily swallowed up public attention, it was clear something in the moon program had to change. The Ranger program chief at JPL was fired, as were several engineers. The whole program was put on hold until
they could figure out what was going wrong.

  Meanwhile, Mariner 2 was getting closer to its goal. On Halloween it lost one of its solar panels, and by the middle of November the poor ship overheated, its temperature gauges hitting the upper limit of its sensors. Yet it kept on course, limping along to Venus.

  While Ranger floundered and Mariner soared, Sue was experiencing the highs and lows of new motherhood. She alternated between overwhelming joy and sleepless despair. The days ran together, so that often the milk delivery was her only clue as to the day of the week. Sue could feel her life bending around her son, Ian. Everything else was slipping away. When he was six months old, Helen called, asking if she’d like to return. She looked at her baby’s wide, toothless grin and didn’t think she’d ever go back.

  Janet Davis was about to leave too. Fulfilling Dr. Gates’s prophecy, she was eight months pregnant and knew she would have to quit soon. She hid the pregnancy as best she could, wanting to work right up to the end. When she wasn’t crippled by terrible morning sickness, she was hungry all the time, constantly snacking at the lab, doughnuts being one of her favorites.

  Sometimes at night, Janet would look up at the bright speck of light in the sky and wonder what was there. Venus was so easy to see, a dazzling spot that popped up next to the moon. The women wondered what could be on the planet that spun next to Earth whose atmosphere, entirely obscured by clouds, was impenetrable to high-powered telescopes. They had discussed some of the crazy theories out there, laughing at the idea that the whole planet was a hot, steamy jungle with alien dinosaurs roaming its surface. As Carl Sagan said, “Observation: I can’t see a thing. Conclusion: Dinosaurs.” Her hand on her belly, Janet looked up at its twinkling light and thought, Soon enough, we’ll know what you’re hiding.